Road safety

I will use this blog post as a pointer to a new static area on my site under Musings & Ideas called “Road Safety“.

On 29th January, on my way to the gym I noticed this just over a mile from home.

Copyright – Samuel Shoesmith

How? The police would have conducted interviews with those involved and if necessary analysed the marks in the road to work out the positioning and speed the vehicle travelled. To avoid speculation, I contacted the police but they declined to comment.

With the official route closed off, I took to crowd source my answers on the Wellingborough Now & Then, a community Facebook group. Of course, speculation from members of the the public arose and conflicting accounts of what happened were laid out. One person claimed another car came on the wrong side of the road causing this red car to swerve. Another witness said she was walking her dog, heard it skid, hit the bollard and then carry on. The latter claims to have spoken to the passenger who said “they had missed judged [sic] the corner”.

You may think why am I bothering? By the sound of these witnesses, no one else was hurt and it was simply a misjudgement. Yeah. Ummm. Well . . .

Copyright – Samuel Shoesmith

Imagine if someone was walking where the car hit the bollard. Like this:

Someone happened to be walking past . . .

Copyright – Samuel Shoesmith

And that person ended up like this . . .

Copyright – Samuel Shoesmith

The photo below is taken with the car behind me. The road in front is Brickhill Road. This area is a 20mph zone. Would going at 20mph have caused this much damage to the car? It is made of metal not paper. And the bollard was no more.

Copyright – Samuel Shoesmith

The bollard even had high-vis on yet the car still managed to hit it. I contacted the council through the Street Doctor and after a short while it was replaced. This photo was taken on the 11th February. Let’s hope this never happens again but if it does, at least pedestrians have this as a first line of defence to protect them.